j^t*y&**&&?\ 


THE  SCHISM 


ANGLO-SAXON   RACE 


THE  SCHISM 


IN   THE 


ANGLO-SAXON   RACE 


THE  SCHISM 


ANGLO-SAXON    RACE 


GOLDWIN  SMITH,  M.  A.,  D.  c.  L. 


AN    ADDRESS    DELIVERED    BEFORE   THE   CANADIAN   CLUB    OF    NEW   YORK 


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THE  SCHISM  IN  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  RACE. 


(     An  Address  delivered  before 
GOLD  WIN  SMITH,  M.  A.,  D.  C.  L.  I 

(V     Canadian  Club  of  New  York. 


the 
b 


N  the  strength  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, 
— of  which  British  Institutions,  now 
adopted  by  every  European  nation 
except  Russia,  the  British  Empire 
in  India,  and  the  American  Republic, 
besides  many  a  famous  deed  and 
glorious  enterprise,  are  the  proofs, — 
there  lurks  a  weakness.  •  It  is  the 
weakness  of   self-reliance  pushed  to 


\  an  extreme,  which  breeds  division  and  isolation.     Races  such 
\Ls  /  as  the  Celtic  race,  weaker  in  the  individual,   are   sometimes 


made  by  their  clannish  cohesiveness  stronger  in  the  mass.    The 


305426 


Y 


6  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

Celt  seems  to  have  lingered  long  in  the  clan  state  and  to  have 
had  his  character  permanently  moulded  by  it,  while  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  a  sea-rover  came  early  out  of  that  state  and  was  trained 
'from  the  infancy  of  the  race  to  self-government.     In  enterprise 

WWllllill         ■!!    Ill  111  — 

and  peril  Anglo-Saxon  will  be  the  truest  of  comrades  to  Anglo- 
Saxon.     But  except  under  strong  compression  they  are  apt  to 

I     fly  apart.     Even  in  travelling  they  hold  aloof  from  each  other. 

\  They  quarrel  easily  and  do  not  easily  forget.  Their  pride 
perpetuates  their  estrangement.  In  their  spleen  and  factious- 
ness they  take  the  part  of  outsiders  againt  each  other.  It  is 
thus  that  the  race  is  in  danger  of  losing  its  crown.  It  is  thus 
that  it  is  in  danger  of  forfeiting  the  leadership  of  civiliza- 
tion to  inferior  but  more  gregarious  races,  to  the  detriment  of 
civilization  as  well  as  to  its  own  disparagement.  The  most 
signal  and  disastrous  instance  of  this  weakness  is  the  schism  in 
the  race  caused  by  the  American  Revolution  with  the  long 
estrangement  that  has  followed,  concerning  which  I  am  to 
speak  this  evening. 

You  and  I,  gentlemen  of  the  Canadian  Club  of  New  York  ; 
you,  natives  of  Canada,  and  some  of  you  perhaps  descendants  of 
United  Empire  Loyalists  domiciled  in  the  United  States ;  I,  an 
Englishman,  holding  a  professorship  of  History  in  an  American 
University — represent  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  as  it  was  before 
the  schism,  as  it  will  be  when  the  schism  is  at  an  end.  We 
Remind  the  race  of  the  time  when  its  magnificent  realm  in  both 
/hemispheres  was  one,  and  teach  it  to  look  for  the  time  when 
;  that  realm  will  be  united  again,  not  by  a  political  bond,  which 
from  the  beginning  was  unnatural  and  undesirable,  but  by  the 
bond  of  the  heart.     While  the  cannon  of  the  Fourth  of  July 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.    .  7 

are  being  fired,  and  the  speeches  are  being  made  in  honor  of 
American  Independence,  we,  though  we  rejoice  in  the  birth  of 
the  American  Republic,  must  toll  the  bell  of  mourning  for  the 
schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  We  must  ask  ourselves,  and 
so  far  as  without  offence  we  may  exhort  Americans  to  ask 
themselves,  what  the  quarrel  was  about,  whether  it  was  such  a 
quarrel  as  might  reasonably  breed  not  only  enmity  for  the  time 
but  undying  hatred ;  whether  it  ought  not  long  before  this  to 
have  given  place  to  kinder  and  nobler  thoughts ;  and  whether 
by  cherishing  it  and  treating  it  as  a  point  of  national  pride  the 
Anglo-Saxon  of  the  west  does  not  disparage  and  traduce  his 
own  greatness. 

t  The  relation  of  political  dependence  between  an  Anglo- 
/  Saxon  colony  and  its  mother  country  was  probably  from  the 
/  beginning  unsound,  and  being  unsound  it  was  always  fraught 
with  the  danger  of  a  violent  rupture.  Perhaps  it  may  be  said 
that  nothing  could  have  averted  such  a  rupture  except  a 
prescience  which  the  wisest  of  statesmen  seldom  possess,  or 
the  teaching  of  a  sad  experience  such  as  has  led  England  since 
the  American  Revolution  to  concede  to  Canada  and  her  other 
colonies  virtual  independence.  The  Greek  colonist  took  the 
sacred  fire  from  the  altar  hearth  of  the  parent  state  and  went 
forth  to  found  a  greater  Greece  in  perfect  independence,  owing 
the  parent  state  no  political  allegiance  but  only  filial  affection. 
It  might  have  been  better  if  the  Anglo-Saxon,  fully  the  equal 
of  the  Greek  in  colonizing  faculty  and  power  of  political 
organization,  had  done  the  same.  In  this  way  it  was  that 
England  herself  had  been  founded.  But  the  sentiment  of 
personal  allegiance  to  the  Sovereign  in  whose  realm  the  emi- 


8  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

grant  had  been  born  was  strong  in  all  feudal  communities.  It 
shows  itself  clearly  in  the  covenant  made  on  landing  by  the 
emigrants  of  the  Mayflower ;  nor  had  it  by  any  means  lost  its 
hold  over  the  minds  even  of  men  who  took  part  in  the 
American  Revolution.  In  the  period  during  which  the  col- 
onies were  founded  this  sentiment  was  universal.  The  colonies 
of  the  United  Netherlands  were  dependencies  as  well  as  those 
of  the  Spanish,  French,  and  British  monarchies.  They  were 
dependencies,  and  as  such  they  were  protected  and  supported 
by  the  military  power  of  the  parent  state.  Had  the  British 
colonies  not  been  protected  and  supported  by  the  arms  of 
England,  would  this  continent  have  become  the  heritage  of  the 
English-speaking  race  ?  The  English  colonist  was  stronger  no 
doubt  than  the  colonist  of  New  France ;  but  was  he  stronger 
than  the  colonist  of  New  France  backed  by  the  French  fleets 
and  armies?  Might  he  not,  instead  of  calling  this  vast  and 
peerless  realm  his  own,  have  merely  shared  it  with  three  or  four 
other  races  between  whom  and  him  there  would  have  been  a 
balance  of  power,  rivalry,  war  and  all  the  evils  from  which 
afflicted  and  over-burdened  Europe  sometimes  dreams  of  escap- 
ing by  means  of  a  European  Federation  ?  Might  he  not  even 
have  entirely  succumbed  to  the  concentrated  power  of  the 
French  monarchy,  wielded  by  the  strong  hand  and  the  towering 
ambition  of  a  Richelieu  or  a  Louvois  ?  These  are  contingencies 
unfulfilled,  but  unfulfilled  perhaps  because  one  memorable 
morning,  on  the  Heights  of  Abraham,  a  British  army  and  a 
British  hero  decided  that  Anglo-Saxon,  not  French,  should  be 
the  language,  that  Anglo-Saxon,  not  French,  should  be  the 
polity  and  the  laws  of  the  New  World.     And  when  that  day 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  9 

was  won  there  burst  from  the  united  heart  of  the  whole  race  in 
both  hemispheres  a  cheer  not  only  of  triumph  but  of  mutual 
affection  and  of  Anglo-Saxon  patriotism  which  history  still 
hears  amidst  the  cannon  of  the  Fourth  of  July. 

Was  the  connection  felt  by  the  colonists  to  be  generally 
oppressive  and  odious,  or  was  the  cause  of  quarrel  merely  a 
dispute  on  a  particular  point  with  the  home  government  of  the 
day  ?  In  the  first  case  it  might  be  natural,  if  not  reasonable  or 
noble,  to  cherish  the  feud,  in  the  second  it  clearly  would  be 
unnatural.  That  the  connection  was  not  felt  to  be  oppressive 
and  odious,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  the  mass  of  the  colonists 
was  dear  and  cherished,  is  a  fact  of  which,  if  all  the  proofs  were 
produced,  they  would  more  than  fill  my  allotted  hour.  Franklin 
said,  only  a  few  days  before  Lexington,  that  he  had  more  than 
once  travelled  almost  from  one  end  of  the  continent  to  the 
other,  and  kept  a  variety  of  company  eating,  drinking,  and 
conversing  with  them  freely,  and  never  had  heard  in  any 
conversation  from  any  person,  drunk  or  sober,  the  least  expres- 
sion of  a  wish  for  separation  or  hint  that  such  a  thing  would  be 
advantageous  to  America.  Jay  said,  that  before  the  second 
petition  of  Congress,  in  1775,  he  never  heard  an  American  of 
of  any  class  or  of  any  description  express  a  wish  for  the 
independence  of  the  colonies.  Jefferson  said,  that  before  the 
commencement  of  hostilities  he  had  never  heard  a  whisper  of  a 
disposition  to  separate  from  Great  Britain,  and  after  that  the 
possibility  was  contemplated  by  all  as  an  affliction.  The  Fairfax 
County  "  Resolves  "  denounce  as  a  malevolent  falsehood  the 
notion  breathed  by  the  Minister  into  the  ear  of  the  King  that 
the  colonies  intended  to  set  up  for  independent  States.     Wash- 


io  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

ington,  on  assuming  the  command,  declared,  in  his  reply  to  an 
address  from  New  York,  that  the  object  of  the  war  was  a 
restoration  of  the  connection  on  a  just  and  constitutional 
footing.  Madison,  at  a  later  day,  avowed  that  it  had  always 
been  his  impression  that  a  re-establishment  of  the  colonial 
relations  to  the  parent  country,  as  they  were  previous  to  the 
controversy,  was  the  real  object  of  every  class  of  the  people  till 
the  hope  of  obtaining  it  had  fled.  Dickinson  was  not  more 
opposed  to  arbitrary  taxation  than  he  was  to  separation,  and 
the  fiery  Otis  might  be  called  as  a  witness  on  the  same  side.* 
Men  there  were  no  doubt,  like  Samuel  Adams,  republicans  in 
sentiment  and  devoted  to  political  agitation,  who  from  the 
beginning  aspired  to  independence  and  meant  to  bring  about  a 
rupture ;  but  they  found  it  necessary  to  cloak  their  designs, 
and  that  necessity  was  the  proof  that  the  general  sentiment 
was  in  favor  of  the  connection. 

There  is  another  proof  of  the  same  fact  which  is  familiar 
to  every  Canadian  mind  and  of  which  Canada  herself  is  the 
lasting  embodiment.  It  is  found  in  the  number  and  constancy 
of  the  Loyalists  whose  annals  have,  been  written  in  a  most 
generous  spirit  by  a  representative  of  their  enemies,  Mr. 
Sabine,  and  whose  illustrious  and  touching  heritage  of  mis- 
fortune is  still  the  light  and  pride  of  not  a  few  Canadian 
hearths  in  the  land  in  which,  by  the  insensate  cruelty  of  the 
victor,  the  vanquished  were  compelled  to  seek  a  home.  There 
seems  reason  to  believe  that  fully  one-half  of  the  people 
including  a  fair  share  of  intelligence,  remained  at  least  passively 


*  I  owe  most  of  these  citations  to  Mr.  Sabine. 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  n 

loyal  till  the  blundering  arrogance  and  violence  of  the  royal 
officers  estranged  multitudes  from  the  royal  cause.  Twenty-five 
thousand  Americans,  as  Sabine  thinks,  according  to  the  lowest 
computation,  were  in  arms  for  the  crown.  To  the  end  there 
were  whole  batallions  of  them  serving  in  the  royal  army.  Sabine 
says  that  Sir  Guy  Carleton  sent  away  twelve  thousand  exiles 
for  loyalty's  sake  from  New  York  before  the  evacuation. 
Judge  Jones,  in  the  history  the  publication  of  which  we  owe  to 
the  New  York  Historical  Society,  gives  a  much  larger  number. 
Two  thousand  took  their  departure  even  from  the  shores  of 
Republican  Massachusetts.  When  the  Netherlands  cast  off  the 
yoke  of  Spain,  when  Italy  cast  off  the  yoke  of  Austria,  how 
many  Dutchmen  or  Italians  went  into  exile  out  of  loyalty  to 
the  oppressor  ? 

This  was  not  like  the  revolt  of  the  Netherlands  or  of  Italy, 
a  rising  against  a  foreign  yoke  :  it  was  a  civil  war,  which  divided 
England  as  well  as  the  United  States.  The  American  party  in 
the  British  Parliament  crippled  the  operations  of  the  govern- 
ment and  upon  the  first  reverses  enforced  peace.  Otherwise 
the  loss  of  Cornwallis's  little  army  would  not  have  been  the 
end.  The  contest  would  have  been  carried  on  by  Great  Britain 
with  the  same  unyielding  spirit  which,  after  a  struggle  of 
twenty  years,  overthrew  Napoleon. 

"  It  is  the  glory  of  England, "  says  Bancroft,  "  that  the 
rightfulness  of  the  Stamp  Act  was  in  England  itself  the  subject 
of  dispute.  It  could  have  been  so  nowhere  else.  The  King 
of  France  taxed  the  French  colonies  as  a  matter  of  course ;  the 
King  of  Spain  collected  a  revenue  by  his  will  in  Mexico  and 
Peru,  in  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico,  and  wherever  he  ruled.     The 


12  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

States-General  of  the  Netherlands  had  no  constitutional  scruples 
about  imposing  duties  on  their  outlying  possessions.  To 
England  exclusively  belongs  the  honor  that  between  her  and 
her  colonies  the  question  of  right  could  arise ;  it  is  still  more  to 
her  glory,  as  well  as  to  her  happiness  and  freedom,  that  in  that 
contest  her  success  was  not  possible.  Her  principles,  her 
traditions,  her  liberty,  forbade  that  arbitrary  rule  should 
become  her  characteristic.  The  shaft  aimed  at  her  new  colonial 
policy  was  tipped  with  a  feather  from  her  own  wing."  The 
reason  why  the  colonies  took  arms,  in  short,  was  not  that  they 
were  worse  treated  by  their  mother-country  than  other  colonists 
in  those  days,  but  that  they  were  better  treated.  They  rebelled 
not  because  they  were  enslaved,  but  because  they  were  so  free 
that  the  slightest  curtailment  of  freedom  seemed  to  them 
slavery.  Whig  and  Tory,  as  Mr.  Sabine  says,  wanted  the  same 
thing.  Both  wanted  the  liberty  which  they  had  enjoyed ;  but 
the  Whig  required  securities  while  the  Tory  did  not.  The 
Tory  might  have  said  that  he  had  the  securities  which 
Bancroft  himself  has  enumerated,  those  afforded  by  the  tradi- 
tions, the  Constitution,  the  political  spirit  of  England  herself, 
against  any  serious  or  permanent  aggression  on  colonial  liberty  ; 
and  that  while  he  possessed,  in  municipal  self-government,  in 
jury  trial,  in  freedom  of  conscience  and  of  the  press,  in  the 
security  of  person  and  of  private  property,  the  substance  of 
freedom,  he  would  exercise  a  little  patience  and  try  whether 
the  repeal  of  the  Tea  Duty  could  not  be  obtained  before  he 
plunged  the  country  into  civil  war.  The  Stamp  Duty  had  been 
repealed,  and  though  at  the  same  time  the  abstract  right  of 
parliament  to  tax  the  colonies  had  been  asserted,  this  had  been 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  ij 

done  with  the  full  concurrence  of  Burke,  and  manifestly  by- 
way of  saving  the  dignity  of  the  Imperial  legislature.  The  Tea 
Duty,  trifling  in  itself,  was  a  mere  freak  of  Townsend's  tipsy 
genius,  to  which  the  next  turn  in  the  war  of  parliamentary 
parties  might  have  put  an  end,  if  colonial  violence  had  not 
given  a  fatal  advantage  to  the  party  of  violence  in  the  Imperial 
government.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  have  been  clear  from  the 
outset,  even  to  the  mind  of  Franklin,  that  the  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment, had  not  the  legal  power  of  taxing  the  colonies,  unwise 
and  unjust  as  the  exercise  of  that  power  might  be.  It  was  the 
only  Parliament  of  the  Empire,  and  in  regard  to  taxation  as  well 
as  other  matters,  in  it  or  nowhere  was  sovereign  power.  That  it 
had  absolute  power  of  legislation  on  general  subjects,  including 
trade,  was  admitted  on  all  hands ;  and  surely  the  distinction  is 
fine  between  the  power  of  general  legislation  and  a  power  of 
passing  a  law  requiring  a  tax  to  be  paid.  That  there  should 
be  no  taxation  without  representation  might  be  a  sound 
principle,  but  in  the  days  of  the  un-reformed  Parliament  it  did 
not  prevail  in  the  mother  country  herself.  Ship-money,  to 
which  the  Tea  Duty  has  been  compared,  was  part  of  a  great 
scheme  of  arbitrary  government.  It  was  intended,  together 
with  other  devices  of  fiscal  extortion,  to  supply  the  revenue  for 
an  unparliamentary  monarchy,  the  reactionary  policy  of  which 
in  Church  and  State  would,  in  Hampden's  opinion,  have 
quenched  not  only  the  political  freedom  but  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  nation,  and  made  England  the  counterpart  and  the 
partner  in  reaction  of  France  and  Spain.  Nothing  like  this 
could  be  said  of  the  Tea  Duty.  Bancroft  acquits  Grenville  of 
any  design  to  introduce  despotism  into  the  colonies.     Such  a 


14  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

design  could  hardly  have  entered  the  mind  of  a  Whig  who  was 
doing  his  best  to  reduce  to  a  nullity  the  power  of  the  King. 
What  Grenville  desired  to  introduce  was  contribution  to 
Imperial  armaments,  and  he  may  at  least  be  credited  with  the 
statesmanship  which  regarded  the  colonies,  not  as  a  mere  group 
of  detached  settlements,  but  as  an  English  Empire  in  the  New 
World.  The  King  may  have  had  absolutist  notions  with  regard 
to  colonial  as  well  as  to  home  government,  but  the  King  was  not 
an  autocrat.  The  bishops  may  have  wished  to  introduce  the 
mitre,  but  the  bishops  were  not  masters  of  Parliament.  Chatham 
was  more  powerful  than  King  or  bishops,  and  had  his  sun 
broken  for  an  hour  through  the  clouds  which  had  gathered 
round  its  setting,  the  policy  of  the  home  government  towards 
the  colonies  would  at  once  have  been  changed. 

The  preamble  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  sets  forth 
a  series  of  acts  of  tyrannical  violence  committed  by  George  III., 
and  it  suggests  that  these  were  ordinary  and  characteristic 
acts  of  the  King's  government.  Had  they  been  ordinary  and 
characteristic  acts  of  the  King's  government  they  would  have 
justified  rebellion ;  but  they  were  nothing  of  the  kind.  They 
were  measures  of  repression,  ill-advised,  precipitate  and  exces- 
sive, but  still  measures  of  repression,  not  adopted  before  violent 
resistance  on  the  part  of  the  colonists  had  commenced.  No 
government  will  suffer  its  officers  to  be  outraged  for  obeying  its 
commands  and  their  houses  to  be  wrecked,  or  the  property  of 
merchants  trading  under  its  flag  to  be  thrown  into  the  sea  by 
mobs.  Jefferson,  who  penned  the  Declaration,  is  the  object  of 
veneration  to  many,  but  his  admirers  will  hardly  pretend  that  he 
never  preferred  effect  to  truth. 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  15 

One  count  in  Jefferson's  draft  of  the  Declaration  he  was 
obliged  to  withdraw.  In  inflated,  not  to  say  fustian  phrase, 
and  with  extravagant  unfairness,  he  charges  George  III., 
who,  though  he  had  a  narrow  mind,  had  at  least  as  good  a  heart 
as  Jefferson  himself,  with  having  been  specially  to  blame  for 
the  existence  of  slavery  and  of  the  slave  trade.  "  He  has 
waged,"  it  says,  "  cruel  war  against  human  nature,  violating  its 
most  sacred  rights  of  life  and  liberty  in  the  persons  of  a  distant 
people  who  never  offended  him,  captivating  and  carrying  them 
into  slavery  in  another  hemisphere  or  to  incur  miserable 
death  in  their  transportation  thither.  This  piratical  warfare, 
the  opprobium  of  infidel  powers,  is  the  war  of  the  Christian 
King  of  Great  Britain.  Determined  to  keep  open  a  market 
where  men  should  be  bought  and  sold,  he  has  prostituted  his 
negative  for  suppressing  any  legislative  attempt  to  prohibit  or 
restrain  this  execrable  commerce."  This  count,  as  we  know, 
was  struck  out  in  deference  to  the  sentiments  of  patriots,  heirs  of 
the  spirit  of  Brutus  and  Cassius,  who  were  perpetuating  and  were 
resolved,  if  they  could,  to  go  on  perpetuating  the  violation  of 
sacred  rights  and  the  piratical  warfare  laid  to  the  charge  of  George 
III.  Not  the  least  curious,  surely,  of  historical  documents  is  this 
manifesto  of  a  civil  war  levied  to  vindicate  the  sacred  principle 
that  all  men  are  born  equal  and  with  inalienable  rights  to 
liberty  and  happiness,  when  we  consider  that  not  only  was  the 
manifesto  framed  by  a  slave-owner  and  signed  by  slave-owners, 
but  the  Constitution  to  which  the  victory  of  the  principle  in 
the  war  gave  birth  embodied  a  fugitive  slave  law  and  a  legal- 
ization of  the  slave  trade  for  twenty  years.  A  stranger 
inducement  surely  never  was  held  out  to  men  to  fight  in  the 


1 6  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

cause  of  human  freedom  than  that  which  was  offered  by 
Virginia  to  volunteers,  three  hundred  acres  of  land  and  one 
sound  and  healthy  negro.  Equity  compels  us  to  admit  that 
the  want  of  a  thorough  grasp  of  the  principle  of  liberty  was 
not  limited  to  the  mind  of  George  III.  A  Virginian  planter 
fought  not  for  freedom,  the  love  of  whfch  had  never  entered  his 
soul :  he  fought  for  his  own  proud  immunity  from  control 
and  for  the  subjection  to  his  will  of  all  around  him.  *His 
haughtiness  could  hardly  brook  even  association  with  the 
mercantile  and  plebeian  New  Englander  in  military  command. 
Suppose  the  negro  had  taken  arms  in  vindication  of  the  prin- 
ciple that  all  men  were  born  equal  and  with  an  inalienable 
right  to  liberty  and  happiness,  his  manifesto  would  have  been 
tainted  by  no  fallacy  like  that  which  taints  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  The  acts  of  tyranny  and  cruelty  of  which  he 
would  have  complained,  the  traffic  in  human  flesh,  the  confis- 
cation of  the  laborer's  earnings,  the  chain  and  the  lash,  the 
systematic  degradation  of  the  slave,  and  all  the  wrongs  of 
slavery,  would  have  been  not  temporary  measures  of  repression, 
adopted  by  authority  in  self-defence ;  they  would  have  been 
normal  and  characteristic  of  the  system. 

On  Jefferson's  principle  of  framing  indictments  against 
governments  what  an  indictment  might  the  Loyalists  again  have 
framed  against  the  government  of  Independence!  "We  have 
adhered, "  they  might  have  said,  "  to  a  connection  dear  to  all 
of  you  but  yesterday,  to  the  allegiance  in  which  we  were  born, 
to  a  form  of  government  which  seems  the  best  to  us,  and  not 
to  us  only  but  to  Hamilton  and  others  of  your  leading  men, 
who  avow  that  if  Constitutional  monarchy  were  here  attainable 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  if 

they  would  introduce  it  here.  For  this  we  have  been  ostra- 
cized, insulted,  outraged,  tortured,  pillaged,  hunted  down  like 
wild  beasts.  The  amnesty  which  ought  to  close  all  civil  wars 
has  been  denied  us ;  some  of  us  have  been  hanged  before  the 
face  of  our  departing  friends ;  and  now  we  are  stripped  of  all 
our  property  and  banished  from  our  native  land  under  threat 
of  death  if  we  return.  Even  women,  who  cannot  have  borne 
arms  in  the  royal  cause,  if  they  have  property,  are  included  in 
the  proscription  and  in  the  sentence  of  death.  The  proscription 
list  shows,  too,  that  membership  of  the  Church  of  England'  is 
practically  treated  as  a  crime  !  "  Surely  these  complaints  would 
have  been  not  less  pertinent  than  those  of  Jefferson  against 
George  III.  Atrocities  had  no  doubt  been  committed  by  the 
Loyalists,  but,  as  Mr.  Sabine  says,  they  had  been  committed  on 
both  sides.  Conscientious  error  is  no  crime  in  politics  any 
more  than  in  religion,  though  it  is  treated  as  a  crime  by 
fanatical  revolutionists  as  well  as  by  inquisitors. 

Supposing  even  the  Loyalists  could  have  foreseen  the 
present  success  of  the  American  Republic,  and  with  the  success 
the  evils  and  dangers  which  disquiet  thoughtful  Americans, 
would  they  have  been  very  base  or  guilty  in  shrinking  from 
revolution  ?  We  are  on  the  Pisgah  of  Democracy,  but  not 
yet  in  the  promised  land.  No  one  is  in  the  promised  land  at 
least,  except  Mr.  Carnegie,  who  in  his  genial  and  jocund  hymn  of 
triumph,  pouring  forth  his  joyous  notes  like  a  sky-lark  of  demo- 
cracy poised  over  the  caucus  and  the  spoils  system,  ascribes  it  to 
Democratic  institutions  that  the  Mississippi  is  as  large  as 
twenty-seven  Seines,  nine  Rhones,  or  eighty  Tibers.  The 
Democracy  which  shall  make  government  the  organ  of  public 


1 8  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

reason,  and  not  of  popular  passion  or  of  the  demagogism  which 
trades  upon  it,  is  yet  in  the  womb  of  the  future.  Canada  exults 
in  having  exchanged  her  royal  governors  for  a  government 
which  is  called  responsible,  though  nothing  is  less  responsible 
than  a  dominant  party.  In  time,  we  trust,  her  exultation  will 
be  justified  ;  but  there  is  too  much  reason  to  doubt  whether  the 
rule  of  an  honorable  and  upright  gentleman,  trained  not  in  the 
vote-market  but  in  the  school  of  duty,  such  as  General  Simcoe 
or  Sir  Guy  Carleton,  was  not,  politically  as  well  as  morally, 
better  for  all  but  professional  politicians,  than  a  reign  of  faction, 
demagogism  and  corruption.  Forwards  not  backwards  we  must 
look,  forwards  not  backwards  we  must  go.  Yet  history  may 
extend  its  charity  to  those  who,  when  they  were  not  smarting 
under  intolerable  or  hopeless  oppression,  shrank  from  passing 
through  a  Red  Sea  of  civil  bloodshed  to  a  Canaan  which 
was  beyond  their  ken. 

Besides  the  Tea  Tax,  no  doubt,  there  were  the  restrictions 
on  trade.  These  were  in  reality  a  more  serious  grievance,  and 
probably  they  had  at  bottom  at  least  as  much  to  do  with  the 
Revolution  as  the  Tea  Tax.  But  such  were  the  economical  creed 
and  the  universal  practice  of  the  day.  Chatham,  the  idol  of  the 
colonists,  it  was  who  threatened  that  he  would  not  allow  them 
to  manufacture  a  horse-nail.  The  colonists  themselves  pro- 
bably, though  they  groaned  under  restrictions,  shared  the 
delusion  as  to  the  principle  in  pursuance  of  which  the  restric- 
tions were  imposed,  and  they  enjoyed  privileges  granted  on 
the  same  principle  and  equally  irrational  which  were  supposed 
to  be  a  compensation.  The  light  of  economical  science  had 
then  barely  dawned.     Even  now  the  shadows  of  the  restrictive 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  /cj 

policy  linger  in  the  valleys  though  the  peaks  have  caught  the 
rays  of  morning. 

There  were  Americans  who  desired  a  Republic.  Samuel 
Adams  we  can  hardly  doubt  was  one  of  them.  Judge  Jones 
tells  us  that  there  was  a  Republican  association  at  New  York 
with  classical  phrases  and  aspirations.  The  patriotism  of 
those  days,  the  patriotism  of  Wilkes  and  Junius,  was  classical, 
not  religious,  like  that  of  Hampden  and  Cromwell.  It  affected 
the  Roman  in  everything,  and  was  not  unconnected  with 
Roman  Punch.  But  had  George  III.  offered  his  colonial 
subjects  a  Republic,  his  offer  would  have  been  rejected  by  an 
overwhelming  majority.  Jefferson  was  a  Rousseauist  and  a 
French  revolutionist  in  advance.  When  Jacobinism  came  on 
the  scene  his  affinity  to  it  appeared.  He  palliates,  to  say  the 
least,  the  September  massacres  and  gives  his  admirers  reason 
for  rejoicing  that  he  was  not  a  Parisian,  since,  if  he  had  been, 
he  might  have  canted  with  Robespierre  and  murdered  with 
Billaud  Varennes.  "  My  own  affections,  "  he  says,  "  have  been 
deeply  wounded  by  some  of  the  martyrs  to  this  cause,  but 
rather  than  it  should  have  failed  I  would  have  seen  the  earth 
desolated.  Were  there  but  an  Adam  and  Eve  kept  in  every 
country  and  left  free  it  would  have  been  better  than  it  now  is." 
So  inestimable  to  this  slave-holder  appeared  the  boon  of  liberty, 
even  the  liberty  of  a  bedlam  turned  into  a  slaughter-house, 
even  the  liberty  which  went  yelling  about  the  streets  with  the 
head  of  a  Farmer-General  or  the  fragments  of  a  Court  lady's 
body  on  a  pole.  Jefferson  and  his  fellow  Jacobins  had  not 
learned  what  the  Puritans  of  the  English  Revolution  had  learned, 
that  you  cannot,  merely  by  getting  rid  of  kings,  make  the  soul 


20  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

worthy  to  be  free.  They  had  not  learned  that  tyranny  is  the 
offspring,  not  of  monarchy,  but  of  lawless  passion  in  the 
possessors  of  power,  and  that  it  can  wear  the  Jacobin's  cap-of- 
liberty  as  well  as  the  despot's  crown.  A  true  brother  of 
Rousseau  who  preached  domestic  reform  and  sent  his  own 
children  to  the  foundling  hospital,  Jefferson  declaimed  against 
slavery  and  kept  his  slaves.  His  theories  may  have  been  true 
and  his  sentiments  may  have  been  beautiful,  but  the  British 
Government  could  not  have  been  reasonably  expected  to  shape 
its  colonial  policy  so  as  to  satisfy  a  Rousseauist  and  a 
Jacobin.  Hamilton,  as  I  have  said,  avowed  his  belief  that  cons- 
titutional monarchy  was  the  best  of  all  forms  of  government. 
He  thought  the  House  of  Lords  an  excellent  institution.  Mason 
said  that  to  refer  the  choice  of  a  proper  character  for  a  chief- 
magistrate  to  the  people  would  be  like  referring  a  trial  of 
colors  to  a  blind  man.  Betwen  the  sentiments  of  these  men 
and  Jefferson's  democracy  the  difference  was  as  wide  as 
possible.  It  would  have  been  difficult  for  poor  George  III.  to 
satisfy  them  all. 

It  is  unquestionably  true  that  the  conquest  of  French 
Canada,  by  setting  the  British  colonists  free  from  the  fear  of 
French  aggression  and  rendering  the  protection  of  the  mother 
country  no  longer  necessary  to  them,  opened  the  door  for  their 
revolt.  But  this,  again,  to  say  the  least,  is  no  proof  that  the 
colonies  had  been  oppressed  by  the  mother  country.  Had  she 
left  the  French  power  on  this  continent  unassailed  in  order  that 
it  might  bridle  them,  her  councils  might  have  been  reasonably 
branded  with  Machiavelism  and  bad  faith. 

The  ostensible  cause  of  this  civil  war,  of  the  schism  in  our 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  21 

race  and  the  violent  rending  of  its  realm,  must  be  confessed, 
I  submit,  to  have  been  inadequate.  In  their  hearts  the  people 
felt  it  to  be  so,  and  their  feeling  showed  itself,  I  cannot  help 
thinking,  in  the  languid  prosecution  of  the  war  on  the  revolu- 
tionary side.  States  fail  to  send  their  contingents  or  their 
contributions,  the  armies  are  always  melting  away,  brave  men 
leave  the  camp  on  the  eve  of  battle,  the  Federal  cause  is  served 
without  enthusiasm  ;  only  the  local  resistance,  where  the  people 
were  fighting  for  their  homes  as  well  as  on  their  own  ground,  is 
really  strong.  Better  materials  for  soldiers  never  existed,  and 
the  colonies  must  have  set  out  with  many  thousands  of  men 
trained  in  colonial  or  Indian  wars.  The  royal  armies  were  about 
the  worst  ever  sent  out  from  England,  and  every  possible 
blunder,  both  military  and  moral,  was  committed  by  the  royal 
generals,  who  allowed  advantages  to  slip  from  their  hands  which 
Wolfe  or  Clive  would  certainly  have  made  fatal  while  they 
estranged  multitudes  of  waverers  who  were  inclined  to  return  to 
their  allegiance.  Yet  Washington's  last  words  before  the 
arrival  of  succor  from  France  are  the  utterance  of  blank 
despair.  "  Be  assured,  "  he  writes  to  Laurens,  the  agent  in 
France,  in  April,  1771,  "that  day  does  not  follow  night  more 
certainly  than  it  brings  with  it  some  additional  proof  of  the 
impracticability  of  carrying  on  the  war  without  the  aid  you  were 
directed  to  solicit." 

Nor  is  it  only  of  want  of  zeal  and  vigor  that  Wash- 
ington and  those  who  shared  his  responsibility  complain ; 
they  complain  and  complain  most  bitterly  of  self-seeking, 
of  knavery,  of  corruption,  of  monopoly  and  regrating, 
heartlessly  practised  in  the  direst  season  of   public  need,   of 


22  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

murderers  of  the  cause  who  were  building  their  greatness  on 
their  country's  ruin.  They  complain  that  stock-jobbing,  pecu- 
lation, and  an  insatiable  thirst  for  riches,  have  got  the  better 
of  every  other  consideration  in  almost  every  order  of  men,  and 
that  there  is  a  general  decay  both  of  public  and  of  private 
virtue.  In  order  that  contractors  may  fatten,  armies  go  unfed 
and  unclothed,  tracing  the  line  of  their  winter  march  with 
blood  from  their  shoeless  feet.  Congress  pays  its  debts  with 
paper  which  it  tries,  like  the  French  Jacobins,  to  force  into 
circulation  by  penal  enactment,  and  which,  like  the  French 
Assignats,  opens  an  abyss  of  robbery,  breach  of  contract  and 
gambling  speculation,  an  abyss  so  foul  that  Tom  Paine  himself 
afterwards  proposed  that  whoever  suggested  a  return  to  paper 
money  should  be  punished  with  death.  Washington's  indig- 
nant hand  lifts  a  corner  of  the  veil  of  secrecy  which  covered 
the  proceedings  of  Congress  and  the  life  of  its  members  at 
Philadelphia.  There  was  at  least  as  much  public  spirit  among 
these  people  as  there  was  among  any  other  people  in  the 
world.  But  the  cause  had  not  been  sufficient  to  call  it  forth. 
As  soon  as  the  tar  barrels  of  revolutionary  excitement  had  burned 
out,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Sons  of  Liberty  failed.  The  insur- 
gents of  the  Netherlands,  when  they  struggled  onwards  through 
wave  after  wave  of  blood  to  independence,  had  behind  them 
the  hell  of  Spanish  rule.  The  American  insurgents  had  behind 
them  no  hell,  but  a  connection  in  which  they  had  enjoyed  the 
substantial  benefits  of  freedom ;  and,  after  tasting  civil  war, 
most  of  them  probably  wished  that  things  could  only  be  as  they 
had  been  before. 

The  relation  between  a  dependent  colony  and  the  imperial 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  23 

country,  I  repeat,  was  probably  from  the  beginning  false.  At 
all  events  separation  was  inevitable ;  it  was  impossible  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  realm  in  both  hemispheres  should  remain  forever 
under  one  government,  when_±he  hour  of  political  maturilyior 
the  colonies  had  arrived,  especially  as  there  was  a  certain 
difference  of  political  character  between  the  Anglo-Saxon  of 
the  old  country  and  the  Colonist  which  prevented  the  same 
policy  from  being  equally  suitable  to  both.  What  is  to 
be  deplored,  if  any  foresight  or  statesmanship  could  have 
prevented  it,  is  the  .violent  rupture.  What  was  to  be  \ 
desired,  if  human  wisdom  with  the  lights  which  men  then 
possessed  could  have  achieved  it,  was  that  the  two  portions  of  J 
our  race  should  have  divided  its  realm  in  peace.  Shelburne  / 
and  Pitt  seem  to  have  wished  and  tried,  when  the  struggle  was 
over,  to  get  back  into  something  like  an  amicable  partition  of 
the  Empire.  Among  other  happy  effects  of  such  a  settlement 
the  Fisheries'  dispute  would  have  been  avoided.  But  the  wound 
was  too  deep  and  too  fresh.  Shelburne  and  Pitt  failed,  and 
the  two  great  Anglo-Saxon  realms  became  absolutely  foreign 
countries — unhappily,  they  became  for  many  a  day  worse  than 
foreign  countries — to  each  other.  Suppose,  however,  that  not 
only  the  separation  but  the  rupture  was  inevitable  ;  because  the 
inevitable  came  to  pass,  were  the  two  branches  of  the  race  to 
be  enemies  forever? 

Let  the  Fourth  of  July  orator  ask  himself  what  were  the 
consequences  to  England,  to  America,  to  the  French  monarchy, 
which,  out  of  enmity  to  England,  lent  its  aid  to  American  revo- 
lution, and  to  mankind.  To  England  the  consequences  were 
loss   of   money,   which   she  could   pretty   well  afford,  and  of 


24  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

prestige  which  she  soon  repaired.  The  Count  de  Grasse,  as  the 
monument  at  Yorktown  records,  received  the  surrender  of 
Cornwallis  who,  hemmed  in  by  three  or  four  times  his  effective 
number,  could  get  no  fair  battle  and  was  taken  like  a  wounded 
lion  pent  up  in  his  lair.  But  Rodney  who  did  get  fair  battle 
did  not  surrender  to  the  Count  de  Grasse.  Spain,  too,  must 
needs  interfere  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  quarrel ;  but  on  the  blood- 
stained and  flame-lighted  waters  of  Gibraltar  sank  the  last 
armament  of  Spain  ;  and  the  day  was  not  far  distant  when  she 
was  to  invoke  the  aid  of  England  as  a  redeemer  from  French 
conquest.  England  went  into  the  fight  with  Napoleon,  for  the 
independence  of  Europe,  as  powerful  and  indomitable  as 
she  had  gone  into  the  fight  with  Philip  II.  or  with  Louis 
XIV.  Her  great  loss  was  that  of  the  political  enlighten- 
ment which  she  might  have  received  from  an  experiment  in 
democracy  tried  by  a  kindred  people  at  her  side,  while  her 
politics  have  perhaps  been  somewhat  deflected  from  the  right 
line  of  development  by  the  repellant  influence  of  galling 
memories  and  of  friction  with  an  unfriendly  Republic.  The 
colonies  having  been  the  scene  of  war  must  have  lost  more 
men  and  money  than  England,  besides  the  banishment,  when 
the  war  had  closed,  of  no  small  number  of  their  citizens.  This 
loss  they  soon  repaired,  but  they  also  lost  their  history  and  that 
connection  with  the  experiences  and  the  grandeurs  of  the  past 
which  at  once  steadies  and  exalts  a  nation.  What  was  worse 
than  this,  the  Republic  was  launched  with  a  revolutionary  bias 
which  was  the  last  thing  that  it  needed.  At  the  same  time 
there  was  engendered  a  belief  in  the  right  of  rebellion  and  in 
the  duty  of  sympathizing  with  it   on   all  occasions,  which  was 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  25 

destined  to  bear  bitter  fruit  at  last.  The  rebellion  of  the  South 
in  186 1  was  manifestly  inspired  by  sentiments  nursed  and 
consecrated  by  the  Revolution.  I  remember  seeing  some  words 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  in  his  earlier  days,  on  the  right  of 
rebelling  as  often  as  people  were  dissatisfied  with  their  govern- 
ment, which  it  seemed  to  me  would  have  justified  Southern 
secession. 

Another  consequence  was  the  schism  of  the  race  on 
this  continent,  issuing  in  the  foundation  of  a  separate  and 
hostile  Canada,  which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  was  to 
encounter  the  Revolutionary  colonies  in  arms  and  to  defend 
itself  against  them  with  at  least  as  much  energy  and  as  much 
success  as  they  had  defended  themselves  against  England. 
British  emigration,  moreover,  was  diverted  from  America  to 
Australia  ;  Anglo-Saxon  cities  which  might  have  grown  up  here 
grew  up  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe  ;  and  the  Anglo-Saxon 
element  on  this  continent,  in  which  the  tradition  and  faculty  of 
self-government  reside,  was  thus  deprived  of  a  re-inforcement  the 
loss  of  which  is  felt  when  that  element  has  to  grapple  with  a 
vast  influx  of  foreign  emigration  untrained  in  self-government. 

To  the  French  monarchy  the  consequence  was  bankruptcy, 
which  drew  with  it  utter  ruin,  and  sent  the  King  to  the 
scaffold,  and  Lafayette  to  an  Austrian  prison.  To  humanity 
the  consequence  was  the  French  Revolution,  brought  on  by 
the  bankruptcy  of  the  French  monarchy  and  by  the  spirit  of 
violent  insurrection  transmitted  from  America  to  France.  Of 
all  the  calamities  which  have  ever  befallen  the  human  race  the 
French  Revolution,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  greatest.  If  any  one 
is  startled  by  that  assertion  let  him  review  the  history  of  the 


26  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

preceding  half  century,  see  what  progress  enlightenment  had 
made,  and  to  what  an  extent  liberal  and  humane  principles  had 
gained  a  hold  upon  the  governments  of  Europe.  Let  him 
consider  how  much  had  been  done  or  was  about  to  be  done  in 
the  way  of  reform  by  Turgot,  Pombal,  Aranda,  Tanucci, 
Leopold  of  Tuscany,  Joseph  of  Austria,  Frederic,  Catherine, 
and  Pitt.  The  American  Revolution  brought  the  peaceful 
march  of  progress  to  a  violent  crisis.  Then  followed  the 
catastrophe  in  France,  the  Reign  of  Terror,  the  military 
despotism  of  Napoleon,  the  Napoleonic  wars,  desolating  half 
the  world  and  lending  ten-fold  intensity  to  the  barbarous  lust 
of  bloodshed,  the  despotic  reaction  of  1815,  another  series  of 
violent  revolutions,  another  military  despotism  in  France, 
with  more  wars  in  its  train  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  Communism, 
Intransigentism,  and  all  the  fell  brood  of  revolutionary  chim- 
eras to  which  Jacobinism  gave  birth,  and  which,  imported 
j  into  this  continent  by  political  exiles,  are  beginning  to  breed 

"o    '  serious  trouble  even  here.     Separation,  once  more,  was  inevit- 

able ;  but  if  it  could  only  have  been  peaceful  what  a  page  of 
calamity,  crime,  and  horror,  would  have  been  torn  from  the 
book  of  fate  ! 

Then  came  the  disastrous  and  almost  insane  war  of  1812, 
an  after-clap  of  the  war  of  the  Revolution.  So  far  as  that  war 
was  on  the  American  side  a  war  for  the  freedom  of  the  seas  it 
was  righteous.  Nobody  can  defend  the  Orders  in  Council,  or 
the  conduct  of  the  British  government,  and  the  only  excuse  is 
that  Great  Britain  was  then  in  the  agony  of  a  desperate  strug- 
gle, not  for  her  own  independence  only,  but  for  the  indepen- 
dence of  all  nations.     So  far  as  it  was  a  war  of  anti-British 


AXcrx^^U 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  27 

feeling  and  of  sympathy  with  Jacobinism,  as  to  a  great  extent 
it  was,  the  protest  of  Webster  and  New  England,  it  appears  to 
me,  may  be  sustained.  That  strife  over  and  its  bitterness 
somewhat  allayed,  there  came  disputes  respecting  the  bounda- 
ries of  Canada  and  at  the  same  time  bickerings  about  the 
slave  trade,  which  England  was  laboring  with  perfect  sincerity 
to  put  down.  Later  still  came  the  quarrel  bred  by  the 
sympathy  of  a  party  in  England  with  Southern  secession.  I 
saw  something  of  that  controversy  in  my  own  country,  stand- 
ing by  the  side  of  John  Bright  against  the  dismemberment  of 
the  great  Anglo-Saxon  community  of  the  West,  as  I  now  stand 
by  the  side  of  John  Bright  against  the  dismemberment  of  the 
great  Anglo-Saxon  community  of  the  East.  The  aristocracy  of 
England  as  a  class  was  naturally  on  the  side  of  the  Planter 
aristocracy  of  the  South,  as  the  Planter  aristocracy  of  the  South 
would,  in  a  like  case,  have  been  on  the  side  of  the  aristocracy 
of  England.  The  mass  of  the  nation  was  on  the  side  of  freedom, 
and  its  attitude  effectually  prevented  not  only  the  success  but 
the  initiation  of  any  movement  in  Parliament  for  the  support  or 
recognition  of  the  South.  If  some  who  were  not  aristocrats  or 
Tories  failed  to  understand  the  issue  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  and  were  thus  misguided  in  the  bestowal  of  their  sym- 
pathies, let  it  in  equity  be  remembered  that  Congress,  when  the 
gulf  of  disunion  yawned  before  it,  had  shown  itself  ready  not 
only  to  compromise  with  slavery,  but  to  give  slavery  further 
securities,  if,  by  so  doing,  it  could  preserve  the  Union.  Not  a  few 
friends  of  the  Republic  in  England  stifled  their  sympathy  because 
they  deemed  the  contest  hopeless  and  thought  that  to  encourage 
perseverance  in  it  was  to  lure  the  Republic  to  her  ruin.     When 


28  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

Mr.  Gladstone  proclaimed  that  the  cause  of  disunion  had 
triumphed  and  that  Jeff.  Davis  had  made  the  South  a  nation, 
some  there  were  who  echoed  his  words  with  delight ;  not  a  few 
there  were  who  echoed  them  in  despair.  I  first  visited 
America  during  the  civil  war,  when  the  Alabama  controversy 
was  raging  in  its  full  virulence.  Even  then  I  was  able  to  write 
to  my  friends  in  England  that,  angry  as  the  Americans  were, 
and  bitter  as  were  their  utterances  against  us,  a  feeling  towards 
the  old  country,  which  was  not  bitterness,  still  had  its  place  in 
their  hearts ;  and  it  seems  not  chimerical  to  hope  that  the  feel- 
ing which  was  thus  shown  to  be  the  most  deeply  seated  will  in 
the  end  entirely  prevail.  In  England,  already,  a  display  of  the 
American  flag  excites  none  but  kindly  feelings,  and  the  time 
must  surely  come  when  a  display  of  the  flag  which  American 
and  British  hands  together  planted  on  the  captured  ramparts  of 
Louisburg  will  excite  none  but  kindly  feelings  here. 

The  political  feud  between  the  two  branches  of  the  race 
would  now  I  suppose  be  nearly  at  an  end,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
Irish,  or  rather  for  the  Irish  vote.  I  am  not  going  into  the 
question  of  Home  Rule,  or  as  it  would  more  properly  be 
called,  the^uestion  ot  Cel^c-secession^  But  I  wish  to  impress 
upon  my  hearers  one  Fact,  which,  unless  it  can  be  denied  or  its 
plain  significance  can  be  rebutted,  is  decisive,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
of  the  Irish  question.  The  north  of  Ireland  is  not  more 
favored  by  nature  than  other  parts  ;  its  laws,  its  institutions, 
its  connection  with  Great  Britain  under  the  Union,  are  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  those  of  the  other  provinces  ;  the  only  dif- 
ference is  that,  having  been  settled  by  the  Scotch,  it  is  mainly 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Protestant,  while  the  rest  of  the  Island  is 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  29 

Celtic  and  Catholic  ;  and  the  north  is  prosperous,  contented, 
law-abiding  and  loyal  to  the  Union.  This  fact,  I  say,  appears 
to  me  decisive,  nor  have  I  ever  seen  an  attempt  on  the  part  of 
secessionists  to  deal  with  it  or  rebut  the  inference.  To  extend 
Anglo-Saxon  constitutionalism  and  legality  to  the  clannish  and 
lawless  Celt,  who  after  the  Anglo-Saxon  settlement  in  England 
still  had  his  abode  in  Cornwall,  Wales,  the  Highlands  of  Scot- 
land, and  Ireland  has  been  a  hard  and  tedious  task.  Cornwall 
was  Anglo-Saxonized  early,  though  traces  of  the  Celtic  temper 
in  politics  still  remain.  Wales  was  Anglo-Saxonized  later  by 
Edward  the  First,  and  the  Kings  his  successors,  who  perfected 
his  work.  The  Highlands  of  Scotland  were  not  Anglo-Saxon- 
ized till  1745,  when  the  last  rising  of  the  Clans  for  the  Pre- 
tender was  put  down,  and  law,  order,  settled  industry,  and  the 
Presbyterian  Church  penetrated  the  Highland  glens  with  the 
standards  of  the  United  Kingdom.  The  struggle  to  make  the 
Celtic  clans  of  Ireland  an  integral  and  harmonious  part  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  realm,  carried  on  from  age  to  age  amidst  un- 
toward and  baffling  influences  of  all  kinds,  especially  those  of 
the  religious  wars  of  the  Reformation,  form  one  of  the  most 
disastrous  and  the  saddest  episodes  of  history  ;  though  it  must 
be  remembered  that  struggles  not  unlike  this  have  been  going 
on  in  other  parts  of  Europe  where  national  unification  was  in 
progress,  without  receiving  so  much  critical  attention  or  making 
so  much  noise  in  the  world.  One  great  man  was  for  a  moment 
on  the  point  of  accomplishing  the  work  and  stanching  forever 
the  source  of  tears  and  blood.  That  Cromwell  intended  to  ex- 
tirpate the  Irish  people  is  a  preposterous  calumny.  To  no 
man  was  extirpation  less  congenial ;  but  he  did  intend  to  make 


1 


#i 


jo  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

an  end' of  Irishry^with  its  clannishness,  lawlessness,  supersti- 
tion, ahtr-thrrftlessness,  and  to  introduce  the  order,  legality, 
ancT  settled  industry  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  its  place.  To  use 
hts  own  expression  he  meant  to  make  Ireland  another  England, 
as  prosperous,  peaceful,  and  contented.  It  is  impossible  that 
British  statesmen  can  allow  a  separate  realm  of  Celtic  lawless- 
ness to  be  set  up  in  the  midst  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  realm  of 
law  ;  if  they  did,  the  consequence  would  be  civil  war,  murder- 
ous as  before,  between  the  two  races  and  religions  in  Ireland, 
then  reconquest  and  a  renewal  of  the  whole  cycle  of  disasters. 
Nor  can  any  government  suffer  the  lives,  property,  and  indus- 
try of  its  law-abiding  citizens  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  a  murderous 
conspiracy,  or  permit  terrorism  to  usurp  the  place  of  the  law. 
Butchering  men  before  the  faces  of  their  wives  and  families, 
beating  out  a  boy's  brains  in  his  mother's  presence,  setting  fire 
to  houses  in  which  men  are  sleeping,  shooting  or  pitch-capping 
women,  boycotting  a  woman  in  travail  from  medical  aid,  mob- 
bing the  widow  as  she  returns  from  viewing  the  body  of  her  mur- 
dered husband,  driving  from  their  calling  all  who  will  not  obey 
the  command  of  the  village  tyrant,  mutilating  dumb  animals 
and  cutting  off  the  udders  of  cows,  blowing  up  with  dynamite 
public  edifices  in  which  a  crowd  of  innocent  sightseers  of  all 
ages  and  both  sexes  are  gathered — these  are  not  things  which 
civilization  reckons  as  liberties.  They  are  not  things  by  which 
any  practical  reform  can  be  effected,  by  which  any  good  cause 
can  be  advanced.  America  has  seen  something  of  Celtic  law- 
lessness as  well  as  Great  Britain,  and  more  Irish  probably  were 
put  to  death  at  the  time  of  the  draft  riots  in  this  city  than 
have  suffered  under  all  those  special  acts  for  the  prevention  of 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  ji 

crime  in  Ireland,  miscalled  coercion  acts,  the  very  number  and 
frequent  renewal  of  which  only  show  that  the  British  govern- 
ment is  always  trying  to  return  to  the  ordinary  course  of  law. 
Americans  do  not  allow  conspiracy  to  usurp  the  place  of  legal 
authority,  or  one  man  to  deprive  another  of  his  livelihood  by 
boycotting  at  his  will ;  nor  do  I  suppose  that  holders  of  real 
estate  in  '  New  York  regard  with  philanthropic  complacency 
the  proposal  to  repudiate  rents.  When  the  other  European 
governments  find  it  necessary  to  put  forth  their  force  in  order 
to  oppose  disturbance,  when  Austria  proclaims  a  state  of 
siege,  or  Germany  resorts  to  strong  measures  in  Posen  and 
Alsace-Lorraine,  no  cry  of  indignation  is  heard  ;  when  Italy 
sends  her  troops  to  restore  order  and  crush  an  agrarian  league 
which  is  dominating  by  assassination  and  outrage  like  that  of 
Ireland,  no  American  legislatures  pass  resolutions  denouncing 
the  Italian  government  and  expressing  sympathy  with  the 
Camorra.  It  seems  to  be  believed  that  Ireland  is  governed  as 
a  dependency  by  a  British  Viceroy  with  despotic  power,  who 
oppresses  the  people  at  his  pleasure  or  at  the  pleasure  of 
tyrannical  England.  I  doubt  whether  many  Americans  are  dis- 
tinctly conscious  of  the  fact  that  Ireland  like  Scotland  has  her 
full  representation  in  the  United  Parliament,  and  if  her  mem- 
bers would  act  like  those  from  Scotland,  might  obtain  any 
practical  reform  which  she  desired.  The  Lord-Lieutenant  has 
been  compared  to  an  Austrian  satrapy  in  Italy.  An  Austrian 
satrapy,  with  a  full  representation  of  the  people  in  Parlia- 
ment, a  responsible  executive,  trial  by  jury,  habeas  corpus,  and 
a  free  press !  It  happens  that  thirty  years  ago  the  British 
House  of  Commons  voted  by  an  overwhelming  majority  the 


j 2  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

abolition  of  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  of  Ireland,  but  the  Bill  was 
dropped,  as  Lord  St.  Germain,  the  Lord-Lieutenant  of  that 
day  formally  announced,  in  deference  to  the  expressed  wishes 
of  the  Irish  people. 

I  do  not  blame  Americans  for  misjudging  us  ;  the  au- 
thority by  which  they  are  misled  is  apparently  the  highest. 
But  they  too  know  what  faction  is,  and  that  in  its  evil  parox- 
ysms it  is  capable  not  only  of  betraying  but  of  traducing  the 
country.  Americans  will  presently  see  that  the  dynamite  of 
Herr  Most  and  that  of  Rossa  is  the  same  ;  that  the  seeds  of 
disorder  and  contempt  for  law  scattered  in  Ireland  will  spring 
up  here  ;  that  war  between  property  and  plundering  anarchy 
impends  in  this  as  well  as  in  other  countries,  and  that  you  can- 
not strengthen  the  hands  of  anarchy  in  one  country  without 
strengthening  them  in  all.  Openly,  and  under  its  own  banner, 
anarchism  is  making  formidable  attempts  to  grasp  the  govern- 
ment of  American  cities.  It  is  not  only  your  neighbor's  house 
that  is  on  fire  and  the  flames  of  which  you  are  fanning,  it  is 
your  own.  Nor  ought  Americans  to  forget  that  they  have  re- 
cently themselves  set  us  an  illustrious  example.  By  them 
Englishmen  have  been  taught  resolutely  to  maintain  the  integ- 
rity of  the  nation,  even  though  it  be  at  the  cost  of  the  most 
tremendous  of  civil  wars. 

But  then  there  is  the  social  friction.  At  the  time  of 
the  Revolution  one  ultra-classical  patriot  proposed  that  the 
language  of  the  new  Republic  should  be  Latin,  forgetting  that 
Latin  was  the  language  of  Nero  and  his  slaves  as  well  as  of  the 
Gracchi.  I  sometimes  almost  wish  that  his  suggestion  had 
been  adopted,  so  that  the  two  branches  of  our  race  might  not 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  jj 

have  had  a  common  tongue  to  convey  their  carpings,  scoffings, 
and  gibings  to  each  other.  English  travellers  come  scurrying 
over  the  United  States  with  notions  gathered  from  Martin 
Chuzzlewit,  seeing  only  the  cities,  where  all  that  is  least 
American  and  least  worthy  is  apt  to  be  gathered,  not  the  farms 
and  villages,  in  which  largely  reside  the  pith,  force,  and  virtue 
of  the  nation ;  ignorant  of  the  modes  of  living  and  travelling, 
running  their  heads  against  social  custom,  carrying  about  their 
own  bath-tubs,  and  dressing  as  though  they  were  among 
hunter  tribes.  Then  they  go  home  and  write  magazine  articles 
about  American  society  and  life.  Americans  go  to  England 
full  of  Republican  prejudice  and  sensitiveness,  with  minds  made 
up  to  seeing  nothing  but  tyranny  or  servility  on  all  sides, — 
ignorant,  they  also,  of  the  ways  of  the  society  in  which  they 
find  themselves,  construing  every  oversight  and  every  word 
that  they  do  not  understand  as  a  studied  insult  not  only  to 
themselves  but  to  their  Republic.  I  was  reading  the  other  day 
a  book  on  British  Aristocracy  by  a  distinguished  American, 
the  lion's  provider  to  one  still  more  distinguished.  He  was  so 
far  free  from  prejudice  as  to  admit  that  English  judges  did  not 
often  take  bribes.  But,  in  English  society,  he  found  a  repulsive 
mass  of  aristocratic  insolence  on  one  side  and  of  abject  flunky- 
ism  on  the  other.  The  position  of  the  men  of  intellect,  the 
Tennysons,  Brownings,  Thackerays,  Macaulays,  Darwins,  Hux- 
leys,  and  Tyndalls  he  found  to  be  that  of  the  Russian  serf,  who 
holds  the  heads  of  his  master's  horses  while  his  master  flogs 
him.  He  represents  the  leaders  of  English  society  as  going 
upon  their  knees  for  admission  to  his  parties,  which  ought  to 
have  mollified  him,  but  did  not.     It  seems  that  when  he  was 


34  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

in  England  there  was  only  one  high-minded  gentleman  there, 
and  even  that  one  was  in  the  habit  of  traducing  the  hospitality 
which  he  enjoyed.  If  people  despise  aristocracy  as  much  as 
they  say  they  do,  would  they  be  likely  to  talk  quite  so  much 
about  it?  So  far  from  the  British  people  being  the  most 
abject  slaves  of  aristocracy,  they  are  the  one  nation  in  Europe 
which  would  never  tolerate  the  existence  of  a  noblesse  and 
always  insisted  on  the  equality  of  high-born  and  low-born 
before  the  law.  Aristocracy  has  survived  in  England  for  the 
very  reason  that  there  alone  its  privileges  were  closely  curtailed 
and  its  arrogance  was  jealously  repressed.  In  England,  as  in 
other  countries,  aristocracy  as  a  political  power  is  about  to  pass 
away,  and  there  will  be  other  and  more  rational  guarantees  of 
order  and  stability  for  the  future.  But  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  British  aristocracy  is  worse  than  other  rich  and  idle  classes ; 
I  do  not  believe  it  is  worse  than  the  idle  sons  of  millionaires  in 
New  York.  It  has  at  least  some  semblance  of  duties  to 
perform.  All  its  sins  are  committed  under  an  electric  light  and 
telegraphed  to  a  prurient  world,  which  by  its  very  craving  for 
aristocratic  scandal  shows  that  it  has  a  flunky's  heart.  As  to 
the  pomps  and  vanities  of  life  they  seem  to  me  to  be  pretty 
much  the  same  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  Assured  rank, 
indeed,  is  less  given  to  display  than  new  born  wealth.  Surely 
all  our  studies  of  the  philosophy  of  history  and  social  evolution 
have  not  been  utterly  in  vain.  We  ought  to  know  by  this  time 
that  in  a  land  old  in  story  and  full  of  the  traditions  and 
relics  of  the  past,  beneath  the  shadow  of  ancient  cathedrals, 
gray  church  towers,  legendary  mansions  and  immemorial  oaks, — 
a  land,   of  which  the  trim  and  finished    loveliness   bespeaks 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  35 

fourteen  centuries  of  culture, — the  structure  of  society  cannot 
be  the  same  that  it  is  in  this  New  World.  We  ought  to  have 
philosophy  enough  to  admit  that  a  structure  of  society 
different  from  ours  may  have  graces,  perhaps  even  virtues,  of 
its  own.  The  old  cannot  at  a  bound  become  as  the  new,  nor 
would  it  be  better  for  us  if  it  could.  Americanize  the  planet, 
and  you  will  retard  not  quicken  the  march  of  civilization, 
which,  to  propel  it,  requires  diversity  and  emulation.  England 
may  be  politically  behind  America,  and  have  lessons  to  learn 
from  America  which  she  will  learn  the  more  readily  the  more 
kindly  they  are  imparted.  But  she  is  not  a  land  of  tyrants  and 
slaves.  Her  monarchy  does  not  cost  the  people  more  than 
Presidential  elections.  Good  Mr.  Carnegie,  who  deems  it  the 
special  boon  of  Democracy  that  he  is  perfectly  the  equal  of 
every  other  man,  is  no  more  politically  the  equal  of  a  Boss  than 
I  am  of  a  Duke.  One  liberty  England  possesses,  unless  my 
patriotism  misleads  me,  in  a  degree  peculiar  to  herself,  and 
perhaps  it  is  of  all  liberties  the  most  vital  and  the  most 
precious.  During  this  Irish  controversy,  terribly  momentous 
and  exasperating  as  it  is  to  us,  Irish  Nationalists  and  American 
sympathizers  with  Irish  nationalism,  have  been  allowed  freely 
to  express  their  opinions  even  in  language  far  from  courteous 
to  Englishmen  through  all  the  magazines  and  organs  of  the 
English  press.  The  English  press  is  under  the  censorship 
neither  of  kings,  nor  of  the  mob.  Perhaps  the  censorship  of 
the  mob  is  not  less  inimical  to  the  free  expression  of  truth,  less 
narrowing  or  less  degrading  than  that  of  kings. 

The  literary  men  of  America,  whose  influence  on  sentiment 
must   be  great,  are  apt  to  be  somewhat  anglophobic.     They 


j6  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

have  reason  to  feel  galled  by  the  unfair  competition  to  which 
the  absence  of  international  copyright  subjects  them.  I  was 
reading,  not  long  ago,  an  American  book  of  travel  in  Italy,  very 
pleasant,  except  that  on  every  other  page  there  was  an  angry 
thrust  at  England,  where  the  writer  told  us  he  would  be  very 
sorry  to  live,  though  it  did  not  appear  that  the  presumptuous 
Britons  were  pressing  that  hateful  domicile  upon  him.  Then, 
after  harping  on  English  grossness,  brutality,  and  barbarism,  he 
goes  to  worship  at  the  shrines  of  Byron,  Keats,  and  Shelley ;  as 
though  the  poetry  of  Byron,  Keats,  and  Shelley  were  anything 
but  the  flower  of  that  plant,  the  root  and  stem  of  which  are  so 
coarse  and  vile.  A  Confederate  flag  is  descried,  floating 
probably  over  the  home  of  some  exile,  on  the  Lake  of  Como. 
The  Writer  is  transported  with  patriotic  wrath  at  the  sight. 
Two  Englishmen  on  board  the  steamer,  as  he  tells  us,  grin  ;  and 
he  takes  it  for  granted  that  their  grinning  is  an  expression  of 
their  British  malignity ;  yet,  surely,  it  may  have  been  only  a 
smile  at  his  emotion,  at  which  the  reader,  though  innocent  of 
British  malignity,  cannot  possibly  help  smiling.  "  Heaven 
knows,"  a  character  is  made  to  say  in  an  American  novel  now  in 
vogue, "  I  do  not  love  the  English.  I  was  a  youngster  in  our 
great  war,  but  the  iron  entered  into  my  soul  when  I  understood 
their  course  towards  us  and  when  a  gallant  young  sailor  from 
our  town,  serving  on  the  Kearsarge  in  her  fight  with  the  Alabama 
(that  British  vessel  under  Confederate  colors)  was  wounded 
by  a  shot  cast  in  a  British  arsenal,  and  fired  from  a  British 
cannon  by  a  British  seaman  from  the  Royal  Naval  Reserve 
transferred  from  the  training-ship  Excellent."  The  writer  shows 
that  by  the  very  way  in  which  he  strives  to  color  the  facts  that 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  jy 

he  knows  the  charge  here  levelled  against  the  British  govern- 
ment and  nation  to  be  unjust ;  and  art  ill  fulfills  her  mission 
when  she  propagates  false  history  for  the  purpose  of  keeping 
up  ill-will  between  nations. 

The  soldiers,  by  whom  it  might  be  supposed  that  the 
traditions  of  hostility  would  be  specially  preserved  and  cherished, 
I  have  usually  found  not  bitter ;  but  soldiers  seldom  are. 

When  Mr.  Ingalls,  or  Mr.  Fry,  pours  out  his  vocabulary 
upon  England  and  upon  us  who  rejoice  in  the  name  of  English- 
men, I  want  to  ask  them,  whether  Ingalls  and  Fry  are  not 
English  names.  These  gentlemen  must  have  very  bad  blood 
in  their  own  veins.  Their  education  too  must  have  been  poor, 
if  it  is  on  English  literature  that  their  minds  have  been  fed. 
The  character  of  races,  though  perhaps  not  indelible,  is  lasting. 
It  passes  almost  unchanged  through  zone  after  zone  of 
history.  The  Frenchman  is  still  the  Gaul ;  the  Spaniard  is 
still  the  Iberian.  Abraham  still  lives  in  the  Arab  tent.  Yet 
we  are  asked  by  American  anglophobists  to  believe  that  of  two 
branches  of  the  same  race,  which  have  been  parted  only  for  a 
single  century,  and  have  all  that  time  been  under  the  influence 
of  the  same  literature  and  similar  institutions,  one  is  a  mass 
of  brutality  and  infamy,  while  the  other  is  unapproachable 
perfection. 

There  has  no  doubt  been  a  certain  division,  both  of  char- 
acter and  of  achievement,  between  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  old 
country  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  New  World.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  of  the  New  World  has  organized  Democracy,  with  the 
problems  of  which,  after  the  Revolution,  he  was  distinctly 
brought  face  to   face  ;   whereas  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  old 


j8  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

country,  having  glided  into  Democracy  unawares,  while  he 
fancied  himself  still  under  a  monarchy  because  he  retained 
monarchical  forms,  is  now  turning  to  his  brother  of  the  New 
World  for  lessons  in  Democratic  organization.  With  the 
Anglo-Saxon  of  the  old  country  has  necessarily  hitherto 
remained  the  leadership  of  literature  and  science,  which  the 
race  has  known  how  to  combine  in  full  measure  with  political 
greatness.  With  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  old  country  have 
also  remained  the  spirit  of  Elizabethan  adventure  and  the 
faculty  of  conquering  and  of  organizing  conquest.  Surely,  in  the 
British  Empire  in  India,  no  Anglo-Saxon  can  fail  to  see  at  all 
events  a  splendid  proof  of  the  valor,  the  energy,  the  fortitude, 
and  the  governing-power  of  his  race.  Remember  how  small  is 
the  number  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  who  rule  those  two  hundred 
and  fifty  millions.  Remember  that  since  the  establishment  of 
British  rule  there  has  never  been  anything  worthy  the  name  of 
a  political  revolt,  that  at  the  time  of  the  great  mutiny  all  the 
native  princes  remained  faithful,  that  when  Russia  threatened 
.  war  the  other  day  one  of  them  came  zealously  forward  with 
offers  of  contributing  to  the  defence  of  the  Empire.  Remember 
that  the  Sikhs,  with  whom  yesterday  England  was  fighting 
desperately  for  ascendancy,  are  now  her  best  soldiers,  while 
their  land  is  her  most  flourishing  and  loyal  province.  Yet  we 
are  told  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  can  never  get  on  with  other 
races!  It  is  not  on  force  alone  that  the  British  Empire  in 
India  is  founded;  the  force  is  totally  inadequate  to  produce 
the  moral  and  political  effects.  The  certainty  that  strict  faith 
will  always  be  kept  by  the  government  is  the  talisman  which 
makes  Sepoy  and  Rajah  alike  loyal  and  true.     In  an  American 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  jp 

magazine,  the  other  day,  appeared  a  rabid  invective  against 
British  rule  by  one  of  those  cultivated  Hindoos,  Baboos  as  they 
are  called,  who  owe  their  very  existence  to  the  peace  of  the 
Empire,  and  if  its  protection  were  withdrawn  would  be  crushed 
like  egg-shells  amidst  the  wild  collision  of  hostile  races  and 
creeds  which  would  ensue.  The  best  answer  to  the  Baboo's 
accusations  is  the  freedom  of  invective  which  he  enjoys,  and 
which  is  equally  enjoyed  by  the  native  press  of  India.  What 
other  conqueror  could  ever  afford  to  allow  perfect  liberty  of 
complaint,  and  not  only  of  complaint  but  of  denunciation  to 
the  conquered  ?  We,  gentlemen  of  the  Canadian  Club  of  New 
York,  heirs  not  of  the  feuds  of  our  race,  but  of  its  glorious 
history,  its  high  traditions,  its  famous  names,  can  look  with 
equal  pride  on  all  that  it  has  done,  whether  in  the  Old  World 
or  in  the  New,  from  New  York  to  Delhi,  from  Winnipeg  or 
Toronto  to  Sidney  or  Melbourne,  and  rejoice  in  the  thought 
that  though  the  roll  of  England's  drum  may  no  longer  go  with 
morning  around  the  world,  and  though  the  sun  may  set  on 
England's  military  empire,  morning  in  its  course  round  the 
world  will  forever  be  greeted  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  tongue  and 
the  sun  will  never  set  on  Anglo-Saxon  greatness. 

And  if  in  the  breast  of  any  American  envy  is  awakened  by 
the  imperial  grandeur  of  his  kinsmen  in  the  Old  World, 
perhaps  there  is  a  thought  which  may  allay  his  pain.  Power 
in  England  is  passing  out  of  the  hands  of  the  imperial  classes, 
and  those  which  gave  birth  to  the  heroic  adventurers,  into  those 
of  classes  which,  whatever  may  be  their  other  qualities,  are 
neither  imperial  nor  heroic.  It  seems  to  be  the  grand  aim  of 
statesmen,  by  protective  tariffs  and  ecocomical  legislation  of 


40  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

all  kinds,  to  call  into  existence  factory-life  on  as  large  a  scale 
as  possible,  as  though  this  were  one  thing  needed  to  make 
communities  prosperous  and  happy.  Wealth,  no  doubt,  the 
factory-hand  produces,  and  possibly  he  may  prove  hereafter  to 
be  good  material  for  the  community  and  the  Parliament  of 
Man,  but  he  is  about  the  worst  of  all  material  for  the  nation. 
He  is  apt  to  be  a  citizen  of  the  labor  market  and  to  have  those 
socialistic  or  half-socialistic  tendencies  with  which  patriotism 
cannot  dwell.  England  has  been  inordinately  enriched  by  the 
vast  development  of  her  manufactures.  But  for  her  force, 
perhaps  even  for  her  happiness,  it  would  be  better  if  Yorkshire 
streams  still  ran  unpolluted  to  the  sea  and  beside  them  dwelt 
English  hearts.  It  seems  at  all  events  scarcely  possible  that 
such  an  electorate  should  continue  to  hold  and  administer  the 
Indian  Empire. 

Some  day  we  may  be  sure  the  schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  will  come  to  a  end.  Intercourse  and  intermarriage,  which 
are  every  day  increasing ;  the  kindly  words  and  acts  of  the 
wiser  and  better  men  on  both  sides  ;  the  influence  of  a  common 
literature  and  the  exchange  of  international  courtesies  and 
good  offices — these,  with  all-healing  time,  will  at  last  do 
their  work.  The  growing  sense  of  a  common  danger  will 
cause  Americans,  if  they  hold  property  and  love  order,  to  give 
up  gratifying  their  hatred  of  England  by  fomenting  disorder 
in  Ireland.  The  feud  will  cease  to  be  cherished,  the  fetish  of 
hatred  will  cease  to  be  worshipped,  even  by  the  meanest 
members  of  either  branch  of  the  race.  No  peddler  of  inter- 
national rancor  will  then  be  any  longer  able  to  circulate  his 
villain    sheets   and    rake    up  his   shekels   by   trading   on    the 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  41 

lingering  enmity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  New  World  to  his 
brother  beyond  the  sea.  But  between  the  two  branches  of  the 
race  which  the  Atlantic  divides,  the  only  bond  that  can  be 
renewed  is  that  of  the  heart ;  though  I  have  sometimes 
indulged  a  thought  that  there  might  at  some  future  day  be  an 
Anglo-Saxon  franchise,  enabling  a  member  of  any  English- 
speaking  community  to  take  up  his  citizenship  in  any  other 
English-speaking  community  without  naturalization,  and  that, 
in  this  manner,  the  only  manner  possible,  might  be  fulfilled  the 
desire  of  those  who  dream  of  Imperial  Federation.  But  the 
relations  of  the  English-speaking  communities  of  Canada  to 
the  English-speaking  communities  of  the  rest  of  this  continent 
are  manifestly  destined  by  nature  to  be  more  intimate.  I  do 
not  speak  of  political  relations,  nor  do  I  wish  to  raise  the  veil 
of  the  future  on  that  subject ;  but  the  social  and  commercial 
relations  of  Canada  with  the  United  States  must  be  those  of 
two  kindred  communities  dwelling  not  only  side  by  side,  but 
on  territories  interlaced  and  vitally  connected  in  regard  to  all 
that  concerns  commerce  and  industry  with  each  other,  while 
united  these  territories  form  a  continent  by  themselves.  In 
spite  of  political  separation,  social  and  commercial  fusion  is  in 
fact  rapidly  going  on.  There  are  now  large  colonies  of  Cana- 
dians south  of  the  line,  and  Anglo-Saxons  from  Canada  occupy, 
so  far  as  I  can  learn,  not  the  lowest  grade,  either  in  point  of 
energy  or  of  probity,  in  the  hierarchy  of  American  industry  and 
trade.  One  name  at  all  events  they  have  in  the  front  rank  of 
American  finance.  Of  those  American  fishermen,  between 
whom  and  the  fishermen  of  Canada  this  dispute  has  arisen,  not 
a  few,  it    seems,    are   Canadians.     Not   a   little   of   Canadian 


42  The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race. 

commerce  on  the  other  hand  is  in  American  hands.  The 
railway  system  of  the  two  countries  is  one  ;  and  they  are  far 
advanced  towards  a  union  of  currency.  Of  the  old  estran- 
gement, which  the  Trent  affair  for  a  moment  revived,  almost 
the  last  traces  have  now  disappeared  and  social  reconciliation  is 
complete.  It  is  time  then  that  the  Anglo-Saxons  on  this 
continent  should  set  aside  the  consequences  of  the  schism  and 
revert  to  the  footing  of  common  inheritance,  instituting  free- 
trade  among  themselves,  allowing  the  life-blood  of  commerce 
to  circulate  freely  through  the  whole  body  of  their  continent, 
enjoying  in  common  all  the  advantages  which  the  continent 
affords,  its  fisheries,  its  water-ways,  its  coasting-trade,  and 
merging  forever  all  possibility  of  dispute  about  them  in  a 
complete  and  permanent  participation.  The  Fisheries  dispute 
will  have  been  a  harbinger  of  amity  in  disguise  if  it  leads  us  at 
last  to  make  a  strenuous  effort  to  bring  about  a  change  so 
fraught  with  increase  of  wealth  and  other  benefits  to  both 
countries  as  Commercial  Union.  The  hour  is  in  every  way 
propitious  if  only  American  politicians  will  abstain  from 
insulting  or  irritating  England,  whose  consent  is  necessary,  by 
reckless  efforts  to  capture  the  Irish  vote.  Let  us  not  allow 
the  hour  to  pass  away  in  fruitless  discussion,  but  try  to 
translate  our  wishes  into  actions.  Nor  need  any  Canadian  fear 
that  the  political  separation  to  which  perhaps  he  clings  will  be 
forfeited  by  accepting  Commercial  Union.  A  poor  and  weak 
nationality  that  would  be  which  depended  upon  a  customs 
line.  Introduce  Free-trade  at  once  throughout  the  world  and 
the  nationalities  will  remain  as  before.  Abolish  every  custom- 
house on  the  Pyrenees,  France  and  Spain  will  still  be  nations 


The  Schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Race.  43 

as  distinct  from  each  other  as  ever.     If  political  union  ever, 
takes  place  between  the  United  States  and  Canada,  it  will  not  be    | 
because  the  people  of  the  United  States  are  disposed  to  aggres- 
sion   upon    Canadian    independence,  of    which    there    is    no  / 
thought  in  any  American  breast,  nor  because  the  impediments  ^ 
to   commercial   intercourse   and    of   the   free   interchange    of 
commercial   services   will    have   been    removed,   but    because   \ 
in  blood    and  character,  language,  religion,  institutions,  laws 
and  interests,  the  two  portions  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  on 
this  continent  are  one  people. 


^ 


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